WAICU partners with Husch Blackwell to provide compliance auditing for members at three levels of participation, as well as discounted rates for other legal services.

For more than a century, Husch Blackwell has been committed to the advancement of knowledge. Their Education law team has built a reputation as a leader in representing public and private institutions at all levels of learning, from preschool through graduate and professional education.

Husch Blackwell advises clients on civil rights issues, technology, employment, land use transactions, student affairs, and myriad other issues. Based on their thorough understanding of each institution’s unique culture and operations, they recommend actions that advance each client’s goals. Husch Blackwell also serve as primary outside counsel and first point of legal contact to many educational institutions.

Husch Blackwell also represents more than 250 higher education institutions, providing compliance, operations, and litigation legal services. Their team includes former in-house counsel at educational institutions, major corporations, and government agencies, such as the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice. They regularly advise colleges and universities on student affairs, collegiate athletics and NCAA compliance, Title IX, Title IV, labor and employment matters, and corporate transactions.

Core Education, a public benefit corporation, is WAICU’s exclusive partner for business model transformation and a long-term, mission-critical operating partner of colleges and universities. The Core-WAICU agreement allows WAICU-member institutions to enhance their business models through a unique operating partnership designed to leverage economies of scale to improve revenue, technology, and operating effectiveness. Having served more than 80 institutions and with a staff of more than 200 experts, Core can be a mission-critical partner, providing institutions with necessary operating resources to achieve a prosperous future state. Core leverages economies of scale as operators to achieve operational effectiveness, technology efficiency, market expansion, and successful capital strategies.

Comprehensive Supporting Services
Core believes transformation isn’t a series of fragmented projects. Rather, transformation takes place within a comprehensive institutional operating architecture. The modern institution comprises a set of interconnected “engines” that convert mission into motion, vision into velocity, and capacity into sustained performance. Core helps schools identify where to start and how to connect transformation efforts within each engine to the greater architecture. Start anywhere and evolve.

The Engines of the Institutional Operating Architecture

• Growth & Transformation (Strategic Expansion)
• Strategic Cost (Capital Efficiency)
• Brand (Identity and Trust)
• Academic Portfolio (Learning and Market Alignment)
• Leadership (Governance and Talent Architecture)
• Real Estate (Asset and Capital Strategy)
• ERP (Digital Backbone)
• Analytics (Institutional Intelligence)
• AI (Adaptive and Self-Learning Operations)
• MAP (Structural Partnerships)

Private System Affiliation
The Core Foundation, a 501c3 public charity, has created a Private System Affiliation structure for independent institutions seeking long-term advantages of a system while preserving independence. The system is financially supported by the Core Foundation and operated by Core Education.

Alliance for Board eXcellence (ABX)
ABX is a member-driven organization focuses on supporting presidents and institutional board governance at a moment of unprecedented change in higher education.

To contact WAICU about the program, email collaboration.info@waicu.org.